I was generally able to get an upload rate on the mobile network that was 3 times faster than the top speed of NorthwesTel’s highest level service.

Unfortunately, the data caps on Bell’s mobile network are even more stringent than NorthwesTel’s, so using it full time is not a viable alternative.

Why does NorthwesTel so severely restrict the upload capabilities of its internet services?

There’s really no good reason.

Perhaps the company has a fear of its customers making “commercial use” of their internet connections, like we’re going to set up high-traffic e-commerce sites in our homes that will chew up bandwidth or something.

That’s unlikely. The company’s egregiously small data caps and their associated harsh overuse penalties would certainly regulate away such misuse.

No, the upload speed limit is an arbitrary, unfounded restriction.

Which is unfortunate because it has a broad negative impact on the North’s ability to use the internet to engage with the rest of the world.

We live in an age that requires unfettered internet access. That’s what the “cloud” is all about – being online without constraint.

Internet voice and video phone services are the norm now.

Many services, including Facebook, Google+ and Dropbox allow you to automatically upload every photo you take to their service in preparation for sharing them later.

Cloud file storage and sharing services like Google Drive, Microsoft Skydrive, Apple iCloud, Box, and Dropbox enable you to store your documents, photos, videos and other files on the internet for distributed retrieval and sharing.

Internet data backup services are reliable, affordable and convenient enough for common use.

It’s too bad, then, that NorthwesTel’s upload restrictions make utilizing these and other cloud services very difficult, if not impossible, for northerners.

So what’s the fix? Simple. NorthwesTel should remove or significantly increase upload restrictions on all internet accounts.

At the very least, the company needs to adjust their services to allow for simultaneous high speed uploads and downloads.

After all, when we pay the exorbitant rates we do for internet access and a small ration of data, there really shouldn’t be any restriction on how we choose to use it.

As long as Northwestel is handicapping us arbitrarily, however, the internet in the North should be considered broken.

5 thoughts on “Internet in the North is Broken”

There seems to be a limit on the number of simultaneous TCP connections a single subscriber can have open, rather than throttling the actual bandwidth. The net result is like you experienced where shit just breaks instead of gracefully degrading and slowing down as your bandwidth becomes saturated. As Ian says, this isn’t a “defect” as NWTel told you, they have intentionally set it up this way.

My guess is they do this to break the BitTorrent protocol which this type of obnoxious policy is very effective at, as BT uses many simultaneous TCP connections.

Your point is quite valid though, why are we paying exorbitant rates for Internet that is broken by design.

Lots of good resources on the mechanics of TCP/IP. I think what you are describing is when there is a complete saturation of your upstream connection. It’s a 2-way protocol… and if it the upstream path is completely smothered, you will drop packets in the downstream direction.

I have some upstream applications at home (dropbox, for instance) where you can set a maximum possible upload in kbps per session. So I can upload photos and watch TV at the same time.